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He's a Real Doll by Guy Babineau
Even though he turned forty in 2001, he doesn’t look a day over twenty-five, continues to keep up with current trends, and has more changes of clothes than Liberace. With no body fat to speak of, a perfect chest, narrow hips, and a taut tummy, he has a figure most men can only dream about, even if they spend two hours at the gym every day of the week, and remove the skin off of their chicken breast. (Not too many guys are 6’ 10” with a 30” waist, 29” hips, and a 43” chest.) His flawless complexion is unreal, his body unbelievably hairless. He’s not afraid to toy with style either. The cut and colour of his hair vary frequently, and if those piercing, robin’s-egg-blue eyes look artificial, that’s because they are.
“He’s a doll!” exclaimed the first ads for Ken, in 1961. Since then, Ken Carson, Barbie Millicent Roberts’ perpetual date, has had perhaps a stronger influence on male fashion—especially women’s perceptions of how a man should dress and carry himself—than any movie star, pop singer, or athlete. His lack of a personal home entertainment centre made him sexually non-threatening, almost androgynous.
“Gonna dress you up in my love,” sang Madonna, who turned three soon after Ken was born, to thousands of screaming girls in her opening number at her first stadium concert in 1985. Boy, did she know her audience. They were the first generation of females to grow up with Barbie. Many have credited Madonna for inspiring young women to turn sexual objectification to their advantage. To some, this may seem like blue chip prostitution, but the eighties were all about making the banal bankable. In a way, unmarried Barbie laid the groundwork. Her superficial qualities were her keys to success. Dressed up to reflect Barbie’s—in other words his owner’s—romantic fantasies, Ken stood in the sidelines, admiring and supporting Barbie all the way, an ever-faithful eunuch, more like a gay best friend than a Lothario. Teens and women in their early twenties, who had played with an over-sexualized Barbie and an under-sexualized Ken, had swooned over pretty-boy David Cassidy, and tweenies Donny Osmond and Michael Jackson (speaking of plastic). In their late teens and early twenties, their boytoy jewelry clattered as they crowded the turnstiles into concerts by Duran Duran, Boy George, a mascaraed Prince, and other male Revlon junkies.
In the summer of 2003, despite the fact that boys and young men were playing with increasingly muscular and aggressive action figures, Mattel launched Fashion Insider Ken, a style reporter who covers Barbie’s fashion shows. Through he’s clearly been keeping up with his gym regimen, and has a great body (the measurements above are an extrapolation of his doll-sized dimension) he’s stayed away from the steroids. He is Beau Brummel to G.I. Joe’s fusion of Patton and The Hulk. One opens cars doors, throws his coat over puddles, and sends flowers for no particular reason to a girl-woman whose physical dimensions are achieble to only one out of every one hundred thousand women. These contradictory mirrors of male identity don’t bother Jef Beck. One of the world’s most avid Ken aficionados, and certainly the most visible, he has inspired male collectors around the world to come out of the closet, and bring their favourite male doll with them.
“Ken is a good reflection of the changes in [men’s] fashion,” Beck said by phone from his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The small, mid-Western city seems an unlikely place to find the planet’s premier Ken shrine, but Beck’s comprehensive, catalogued display of unopened, original box sets, stand-alone dolls, and dioramas, could be a museum.
“I began collecting in 1998 after reading reports about Ken’s upcoming 40th birthday in 2001. I started by looking for a New Goodlooking Ken, because that’s the one I remembered most from my childhood.” In 1970, when one of Beck’s two sisters received the 1969 model as a Christmas present, he quickly appropriated it, reasoning that it was okay for a boy to play with a doll if it was a boy doll. The affable, articulate, thirty-nine-year-old Gap manager, who, in a photo on his fascinating website, www.manbehindthedoll.com, looks as cleancut as Ken, didn’t locate NGK until 2001. By that time he’d already amassed a sizable collection. “There are about 270 different Kens, from 1961 to now, and I have maybe 250 of them. Girls like to play with the Pink Box lines. They want Ken to be Prince Charming. I buy them too, but I prefer the [limited edition] Collectibles.”
Ken Collectibles (about $50 to $100) are more like real men and include, among others, Shave and Style Ken and Harley Davidson Ken, who even has chest hair. Pink Box Kens are priced at $12 to $25. A selection of both lines is available at the Barbie shop in the downtown Bay.
When Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, who died last year at the age of 85, first set her sights on a male doll, her design team—all men—didn’t get it. G.I. Joe wouldn’t come along until 1964, and no one thought a male doll could sell. Handler prevailed, but her insistence on a noticeable “bump” the would provide at least a hint of anatomical accuracy was vetoed. Over the last forty-plus years, Ken’s hair has been glued, painted, or thatched, his body has butched up, and his various styles, from tuxedoed prom night dream-date to skater boy to the “gay” Magic Earring Ken, have kept pace with the times. His popularity continues among girls, maintaining a myth of impeccable grooming, fidelity, and gentlemanly conduct , while boys escape into the new G.I. Joe world of Spy Troops, muscle- bound brutes with steroid physiques who mask their identities to infiltrate terrorist cells, the American flag waving behind them. In recent years G.I. Joe a has a double-digit growth in annual sales, including a fifty-nine percent leap in 2001; September 11 happened just in time for the Christmas rush.
Of course, both dolls offer questionable representations of manhood. Like male models and action heroes, the mannequins of childhood are creatures of fantasy.
“I collect them to keep, not to sell,” Beck said. “It’s a nostalgia thing.” Men's Tailoring The Man Who Shot Ziggy Stardust Boss Hugo Boss Ken: The Ultimate Male Model Men's Shoes The Duffer of St. George The Men of 2003 © Guy Babineau 2003-2004
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